It starts off like your run-of-the-mill ro mantic comedy: A married couple try to fix up their widowed friend with a po tential new flame — who happens to be a hot French Doctor Without Borders.

The obligatory gay pal throws quips around, lounging on his chair like a Cheshire cat.

We’ve seen these people before. They’re urbanites in their mid- to late 30s, overeducated and underemployed. They always complain about being tired, even though they don’t seem to do all that much. Self-deprecating, passive aggression comes easily to them.

But Melissa James Gibson’s “This” isn’t your typical romcom — at least, it bares little resemblance to the garbage Hollywood peddles under that name. And while these characters are familiar, they don’t breed contempt.

Irritating and endearing in equal parts, they weave a compelling spell.

A large part of the play’s appeal is that you’re never quite sure what it’s about or where it’s going. The prospective romance between Jane (Julianne Nicholson) and Jean-Pierre (Louis Cancelmi) is quickly dropped. The attraction between married Tom (Darren Pettie) and Jane is revealed, then put on the back burner, though it may or may not have lasting consequences. Alan (Glenn Fitzgerald), craving love, steps to the forefront — until we go back to Jane, who realized she never properly mourned her husband.

“This” is more conventional than previous Gibson downtown hits, including “[sic].” But she retains an interest in language’s quirks and conventions, and looks without sarcasm at the way happiness can become an impossible state for a certain middle class.

The cast makes you empathize with these characters, rather than grow impatient with them. The freckled, elfin Nicholson, in particular, does a lot with very little. Steering far from her detective role on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” she lends Jane a lovely melancholy grace.

At the end, the do-gooding doctor suggests the protagonists’ problems are “dinky.” It’s a little cheap and a little true. And yet these issues matter deeply to those dealing with them.

Thanks to Gibson and her cast, we care enough to believe these molehills truly are mountains.